One more notable entry in the Barbarian genre of post-Conan boom of the early 80’s is (of course) Roger Corman produced Sorceress (1982). Jack Hill (Coffee, Foxy Brown), the director had an idea of combining The Corsican Brothers plot (two brothers able to feel each other’s pain) with the current Playboy centerfolds- sisters Leigh and Lynette Harris and (of course). And with a plan like that you just can’t fail.
Leigh and Lynette Harris in Playboy: MySisterMySelf(1981)
An extremely evil wizard desperately seeks his woman ’cause it’s time to sacrifice his firstborn to the evil god Caligara. Unfortunately for him it turns out he has twin girls. Confused over which one is the first born he kills his wife. Then the Kung Fu Jesus dude shows up and starts laying smack down on his warriors. Traigon tries to hypnotize him but his wife returns from the death and kills him with a knife- then she dies again. Trigon utters some ridiculous prophecy, something like “when the moon is in the house of the dragon once more I’ll come again”. Man, I really need to brush up on my Barbarian Horoscope knowledge.
He promises that he’ll raise children to became great warriors- then it turns out the children are girls, then he decides to still raise them to became great warriors. He kinda backs out on the promise using the magic amulet to bestow them with fighting prowess (something like Matrix before Matrix) and dumps them with some poor villager family so he doesn’t have to actually deal with them. Many years later sisters have grown up to be buxumy blonds that obviously enjoy swimming in the local river. A random and perverse looking Satyr sneaks up on them and they do a bit of their trademark Naked Kung Fu on him. They return to the village afterwards but find it completely ravaged. Knights in their eternal search for “two who are one” raped and burned everything. Twins menage to get there in time to kill couple of the knights but their adopted father and mother are already dead.
“…they are violating her right this moment”
In the aftermath of the slaughter satyr again appears this time in company of the Viking?! And then Krona the Kung Fu Jesus appears again- now older and more resembling Kung Fu Moses. He empowers them with more of his knowledge and then walks into the fire and burns alive??? This is getting weirder and weirder.
“Going into the fire now, see you all later”
Their journey for vengeance takes them to the big city where you can find all the gamblers, thieves and murderers you can think of. Curly -haired barbarian prince Elrick earns a ton of gold by cheating and the rest of the gamblers tried to kill him. It all erupts into one big fight and our heroes of course end up in the middle of it. They naturally team up with a Barbarian Prince and somehow menage to escape. While in hiding we learn that twins don’t know the concept of boys and girls and that is why they are showing their boobs for no reason every two minutes. viking tries to explain them how things go but quickly gives up.
“Girls, what do you mean?”
Unfortunately the lady that kept them hidden betrays them to the Trigon’s soldiers and they capture the twins with a funny looking net that renders them helpless for some reason. Then they subject them to a cruel test to finally confirm which one is the first born but Viking and his new friend Barbarian Prince save them and they head directly to the forbidden forest where knight don’t dare to enter.Evil sorceress (finally I started to thing that the name of the movie was a scam), disciple of Triagon sends her ape servant to fetch them. He assumed command over the other monkeys in the forest and the bombed the intruders with something and they menage to capture one of the girls (Mara) along with a Barbarian Prince.
Apes are the girl’s best friends!
They almost impale the (naked) prince but decide to let him go when they learn of his origins. Then Sorceress offers Elrik to sleep with Mara and then sacrifice them and enchanted by her he accepts. Also we witness the connection between twins with Myra reacting to Mara having sex with Prince with an angry Viking commentating. The level of bizarre of this scene is impossible to describe with words.
See for yourself…
The evil (but laughably pathetic) ritual commences while the Myra, Viking and Satyr attempt to storm the castle. Of course they fail but Trigion menages to offend the Sorceress’s ape and he gives Satyr the sword and swings odds back into favor of our heroes.Skeletons rise from their graves while sacrifice still drags on and in the end Mara gets saved and Sorceress ends up sacrificed- and reborn as a giant Witch head. Twins strike back by summoning Flying Lion creature using the power Kung Fu Jesus/ Moses/ Krona gave them and the rest is history.
Everything you ever wanted to see, Flying lion VS The Withchead!
Everything is fine again, especially for the Barbarian Prince who is looking to have some real fun that same night
Conclusion: Extremely stupid,yet bizarre and entertaining Sorceress is for a reason one of the biggest successes of Roger Corman’s production and it should be noted as probably the finest Barbarian film that he ever produced (rivaling with the original Deathstalker film).
Trivia #1: The director of the movie Jack Hill was crushed by the experience of making Sorceress. Roger Corman never delivered the promised budget so Hill was left to his own devices. As if that was not enough shoot in Mexico was plagued by deadly yin/ yang of rain and fire. In the end he took of his name off the Sorceress (replaced with “Brian Stewart”) and not only never worked with Roger Corman again but never talked to him either. Ironically film became somewhat of solid hit for Corman production earning as much as 8x it’s budget.
Trivia #2. Leigh and Lynette didn’t really succeed in following up the success of the Sorceress (their only role afterwards were as rape victims in I,the Jury) but they did menage to earn millions by having threesome with an extremely wealthy old man over the period of four years. They eventually went to court because of it, as you can see in this article.
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